War of the Island Kings: Hydropower, Spirits & Ontological Crises on the Mekong- Andrew Alan Johnson

Описание: This year, the Mekong River forever changed, as hydropower projects in Laos and China altered the river’s ebb and flow to a trickle. New floods tore through villages, followed by record lows as dam controllers closed floodgates. Entire species of fish vanished. On the bank where I have conducted research from 2015-2019, Lao-speaking Thai fishermen on the river watched as their livelihoods drastically changed.

But what could be done? Fishermen retaliated with protests and public awareness campaigns where such political actions were possible, but they also marshalled older allies on the Mekong: spirits of islands and river features that had historically been guarantors of progress. But as animist “island kings” were called upon to advocate for an end to reckless hydropower projects, their role shifted – some mediums echoed the despair felt by their devotees, others sent curses to the dam controllers, others stonily echoed bureaucratic talking points, others gave up the trade or changed their retinue of spirits entirely.

Here, via looking at the Anthropocene through the lens of Thai-Lao spirit practices, I argue that the Anthropocene becomes a crisis that extends across epistemological horizons, impacting not only ecology and economy, but cosmology and ontology as well.